THANKSGIVING THOUGHTS AND JIM MURRAY

As I'm sitting here pondering my plans for Thanksgiving later today, I can't help but think of holidays past and the people who made them special as I was growing up.  Like many of you I'm sure, we didn't have great wealth but, the holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas were always special.  They were filled with food, family and fun.  We weren't rich but, we never thought about it, or for that matter even realized it.  None of us kids cared or worried about that sort of stuff.  We just got to eat and play.  It was great and I wouldn't trade it for anything.  As I reflect today,  I think of myself as a kid and all  the things I got to do.  I remember how important my friends and relatives were to me in those days, and I think of how sad it was that as we got older, we drifted apart.  Many are gone but, the great memories of those days still linger. I think about it a lot more now and I like to pause and reflect, as I play the mental movies over and over in my mind.  I had a great many people who influenced me in many ways. There were teachers, movie stars, writers etc.  I wish I remembered the details a bit more clearly though but,  what I try to do now at every opportunity, is talk to some of those folks  and see what they remember about certain events, people or places.
The interesting thing I am finding out as I reminisce is how each of us remembers things differently.  It's amazing how one of us remembers something as a big deal but, the other doesn't remember it at all.  What I thought was important is not recalled at all by a cousin or a former elementary classmate.  Funny how that is.  We all see different things differently and we all see the same things differently.  Pretty crazy huh?
One thing that popped in my head for some reason today is an article I read in our local newspaper 40 years ago and it really struck me back then and still does today.  In fact I even have a copy in an old scrapbook I kept.  I've taken a lot of lessons from this short article.  Things like, don't sweat the small stuff, or things could always be worse, or even appreciate what you have because it can go away really quickly. The article was written by a man many consider to be the greatest sports writer of all time, Jim Murray.
Murray was a writer for the LA Times and died in 1998 but, had lost his vision many years earlier.